Advanced air mobility (AAM) is on the horizon as a new way to transport engers or cargo over short distances. It could become as ubiquitous as Uber and Lyft, providing affordable services in and around cities. The key to achieving this is to make AAM autonomous.
Many AAM companies are committed to making their aircraft capable of unmanned flight, either from the initial launch or by implementing new designs later. Introducing unmanned AAM involves a number of challenges and complexities. But what level of autonomy is required for these aircraft? And how can companies make them safe to operate in public spaces?
Fortunately, the automotive industry has been developing autonomous vehicles for years and has had great success with them. Self-driving cars are now a common sight in several cities across the United States. With that, there are many insights from the automotive industry that can help MAA companies in their pursuit of autonomous aircraft, addressing the concerns mentioned above and the importance of digital transformation in making autonomous vehicles a reality.
Levels of autonomy
The automotive industry measures a vehicle’s autonomy in five levels. Level 4 indicates a vehicle that can control a single function, such as braking in linear motion. From there, the levels increase, as does the number of autonomous features. Level 5 means the vehicle can be nearly autonomous but still requires a human driver, while Level XNUMX means the vehicle can operate on its own without a human driver except in emergency situations. Level XNUMX is the pinnacle of vehicle autonomy and requires no human operation.
The good news for AAM is that the aerospace industry is already at Levels 3 and 4. After all, 95% of commercial flights use autopilot to some degree. Typically, human pilots do takeoffs and landings and monitor the rest of the flight to ensure safety. So the foundation is already in place to implement autonomous flight in AAM fleets. Companies just need to determine what that means for their aircraft. For example, Wisk is an AAM company that plans to have remote human supervisors monitoring groups of aircraft, ready to intervene if something goes wrong. That falls under Level 4 autonomy.
The issue is not how to design for the ultimate level or teach an MAA aircraft to take off and land. The challenge is how to design a computer to respond correctly in any ambiguous or unexpected situation—as Commander Sully did when he landed his aircraft in the Hudson River and saved the lives of 155 people.
If a self-driving car breaks down, in most cases it can simply pull over to the side of the road and wait for help. If an unmanned MAA aircraft carrying engers fails in mid-air – for example, if the command connection to its monitoring system fails – the consequences can be much more devastating. As a result, MAA companies will have to go to extra lengths to build in more redundancy before they can get their autonomous aircraft certified. They need to prove to regulators that their aircraft can control themselves in emergency situations, or in other words, act with Level 5 autonomy.
Digital transformation is essential
Ensuring that any level of autonomy for MAA vehicles is safe to operate in public spaces will require insights provided by digital transformation. By incorporating tools like the digital twin, the automotive industry has leveraged this transformation to successfully build autonomous vehicles. Digital transformation is already underway at some level at most aerospace companies, but it will be critical to the pursuit of MAA.
With a digital twin, companies can bring the physical world into the digital world by creating a virtual representation of a product to test and simulate before building a physical prototype. This allows engineers to determine how an unmanned MAA vehicle might behave and prove its reliability, all from the safety of a digital environment. This allows engineers to find and eliminate flaws in their design early and deliver an optimized product to market faster.
Digital transformation also brings many benefits beyond design. From manufacturing to operational , digital transformation can combine and share data from across the entire product lifecycle. For example, data obtained from the operation of autonomous MAA vehicles can be incorporated into the design, improving performance and safety for the next generation of aircraft. The full potential of digital transformation is immense and can benefit the development of autonomous MAA vehicles across the entire process.
Making autonomous MAA comes with a number of challenges, but the foundation for overcoming these challenges already exists. With the insights into autonomous vehicles already gained by the automotive industry and the benefits of digital transformation, the growing MAA industry has the tools and knowledge needed to bring unmanned MAA aircraft to life safely for the public.
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